Harry Reasoner Biography Quotes 6 Report mistakes

Early Life and Education
Harry Reasoner was born on April 17, 1923, in Dakota City, Iowa. The cadence of the Midwest became part of his voice, lending a plainspoken precision and a dry wit that later distinguished his reporting. He gravitated early to writing and performance, working on school publications and radio. After high school he studied at Stanford University and the University of Minnesota, experiences that sharpened his interest in literature and journalism even as the country was pulled toward war.

World War II and Early Reporting
Reasoner served in the U.S. Army during World War II. The discipline of military life and the urgency of wartime communications pushed him toward concise, economical prose, a quality that stayed with him throughout his career. After the war he wrote a novel, Tell Me About Women (1946), evidence of a writerly instinct that never left him, even as he shifted fully into journalism.

In the late 1940s and 1950s he worked in newspapers and radio in the Upper Midwest, finding his footing as a reporter and commentator. The newsroom culture of that era valued clarity, speed, and skepticism. Reasoner developed a delivery that felt conversational without being casual, and he learned to polish his pieces until they read like short essays that happened to be news.

CBS News and the Craft of Television
Reasoner joined CBS News in the mid-1950s, entering a shop that prized strong writing as much as presence on camera. He became a correspondent and commentator, contributing to documentaries, special reports, and election coverage. The CBS operation included some of the most recognizable figures on American television, and Reasoner worked alongside colleagues whose names defined the medium, including Walter Cronkite in the anchor chair and reporters such as Dan Rather and Morley Safer in the field.

Television was still learning its grammar, and Reasoner helped write it. He favored short sentences, sly humor, and a refusal to overstate. As a correspondent, he covered major national and international stories with a tone that was measured yet unmistakably his. Producers valued him because he could anchor live coverage, narrate documentaries, or file a three-minute piece that felt like a complete essay.

60 Minutes
In 1968 CBS launched 60 Minutes, created by producer Don Hewitt as a weekly newsmagazine built around strong reporting and signature viewpoints. Reasoner, paired on air with Mike Wallace, helped set the program's rhythm: investigative segments, profiles, and commentary stitched together with a crisp, literate voice-over. The show eventually became one of the most influential franchises in American broadcasting. Reasoner's contributions, especially his essays and narrations, gave 60 Minutes a tone that mingled skepticism with curiosity.

As the program evolved, new correspondents such as Ed Bradley brought additional strengths, and Andy Rooney's wry end-of-broadcast pieces echoed some of Reasoner's own sensibilities. The interplay among these voices helped make the show distinctive: tough interviews from Wallace, immersive reporting from Safer and Bradley, and the kind of reflective writing Reasoner had been practicing since his earliest days.

ABC Evening News
In 1970 Reasoner left CBS for ABC, where he co-anchored the ABC Evening News with Howard K. Smith. It was a bold move; ABC was then a distant third in the ratings, and the network sought a seasoned journalist to lend credibility to its flagship newscast. Reasoner's calm delivery and authoritative writing were central to the effort. The pairing with Smith gave viewers a two-anchor format that contrasted with CBS, where Cronkite presided as a singular figure.

In 1976 Barbara Walters joined ABC as a co-anchor, a landmark hire that drew enormous public attention and placed the network at the center of a conversation about presentation, authority, and gender on the evening news. The transition was difficult at times, and on-air chemistry proved elusive. Through it all, Reasoner maintained the disciplined craft that had defined his career: a preference for clean prose, a distaste for theatrics, and a belief that the anchor's job was to clarify rather than perform.

Return to CBS and Later Years
Reasoner returned to CBS in 1978 and rejoined 60 Minutes, an environment that better matched his strengths. The program, now a Sunday night institution, offered him the freedom to shape segments with careful writing and considered pacing. He continued to file pieces that relied less on spectacle than on insight, trusting viewers to appreciate nuance.

During these years, 60 Minutes dominated the ratings and helped define public conversation about politics, culture, and business. Reasoner's presence alongside Mike Wallace, Morley Safer, Ed Bradley, and others reinforced the show's range: investigative zeal balanced by skeptical, humane observation. While colleagues such as Dan Rather forged their paths on the nightly news and Peter Jennings rose at ABC, Reasoner became emblematic of the newsmagazine form he had helped to establish.

He remained active at CBS into the early 1990s. Harry Reasoner died on August 6, 1991, at the age of 68. His passing was widely noted across the industry he had helped to shape.

Style and Legacy
Reasoner's legacy rests on the marriage of writing and television. He believed that words mattered more than posture, and that a good sentence could carry more authority than a raised eyebrow. His pieces often began with a simple observation, broadened into context, then returned to a quietly memorable line. The humor, when it appeared, was dry; the sentiment, when it crept in, was spare. He distrusted exaggeration and prized proportion.

Colleagues remembered him as a newsroom writer first and a television personality second, an ordering that kept his work grounded. Don Hewitt valued his ability to set a tone for 60 Minutes without overwhelming it. Mike Wallace respected the discipline of his scripts. Viewers sensed that Reasoner spoke to them as adults. In an era when evening news anchors such as Walter Cronkite came to stand for national consensus, Reasoner carved out a slightly different space: the curious, clear-eyed observer who would tell you what happened, what it meant, and what to watch for next, then leave you to think.

For younger journalists, Harry Reasoner remains a model of how to use television without being used by it. He made complex stories feel intelligible without condescension. He took seriously the craft of writing and treated time on air as a privilege. Few achievements in broadcasting endure as long as 60 Minutes; fewer still bear the imprint of an original voice as unmistakably as the one he brought to it.

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